Career
by Ripper101
Summary: DCS Innocent has worked long and hard to get to where she is, if only so she can keep the boat floating while people like Lewis do their jobs.


She doesn't get a chance to remember it until Robbie shows up.

Well, she's never really forgotten but then she's never had to act on it either: the whole reason she wanted the job was to help the police.

All her life, she'd been someone that other people bounced ideas off. She'd listened. She'd helped where she could. She attended the courses and conferences and made the speeches because someone had to, and the other coppers were out there on the streets, keeping the public safe.

All she'd ever wanted was to provide the link. A space, even. Somewhere where bureaucracy doesn't overwhelm the whole point of the police force. _When I'm in charge_, used to be her favourite saying. Get three glasses of good scotch into her and she'll still say it- _When I'm in charge_.

But getting to the top can be hard, and long, and exhausting, and by the time she got there she was blinded by charts and tables and draft policies, targets and statistics and community liaisons and conferences and seminars and recruitment drives.

The coppers on the street seemed to do just fine without her.

Until Robbie showed up.

She's never appreciated how annoying an Inspector like Robert Lewis can be. From what she's heard tell, Lewis is nothing on Morse but then she can only be grateful for that. At least Lewis has never fabricated evidence. There's a story someone once told her about Morse sending the parents of a missing girl a scam letter, just to prove it could be done.

She thinks of her son, and she thinks of the parents, and there are quite a few words she would love to say to the late E. Morse, not least of which is 'you bastard'.

So far she hasn't had the urge to say anything like that to Lewis. For which she is thankful. She's wanted to call him other things- 'idiot', 'nuisance', 'stubborn sod', 'bloody minded old fool'. But she doesn't. Much.

There's something almost indecent in standing in front of a copper like Robbie Lewis with his rumpled suit and the lack of sleep in his eyes, and her in a perfect wool suit with her hair freshly done and her office without a speck of dust and all the paperwork in neat folders, when she knows that just down the corridor and down a flight, Robbie's office is stuffed full of filing cabinets with the names of vicious criminals and the crimes they commit.

What's more, the bloody minded old fool has the habit of scowling down her admonitions. Like he thinks it's indecent too.

She's found herself dressing down a bit, now that there's someone like Robbie in the station. Hair pinned back. A bit more paperwork in a bit more disorganisation.

She's not the only one. Young Hathaway is actually smiling.

Innocent thought Hathaway would be like her, useful, but not on the streets. Not enough empathy, not enough experience of the human mind. Objective, politically correct, driven by procedure. And the right name, of course, the right look, the right accent- went to the right school, even. Hathaway was perfect for the upper echelons.

Until Lewis came back.

It turned out Hathaway liked the streets, liked his beer and his music and had enough empathy to see Lewis for what he was- a grieving husband whose memory of his wife was precious, but not sacred.

She watches them sometimes. She's not sure if Hathaway has even noticed that he does it, but when Robbie frequently butts heads with some smarmy git with a posh accent, Hathaway begins to loom at his shoulder, radiating silence.

The boy has an arsenal of silences. And most of them are accusatory and somewhat dismissive. The only person who doesn't seem to be cowed by one of Hathaway's silences is Lewis, who tends to shout him out of them.

It's almost as good as a play to have the two of them in her office, reviewing a case. They sometimes forget she's even there, and for just a few brief moments she gets to share in their adrenaline rush. She gets to watch while the pieces fall together.

Not that she envies them.

DCS Innocent is bloody good at her job. And since it usually falls to her to smooth the feathers those two ruffle, or network her way into search warrants and scraps of gossip from certain fields, Lewis gets to do what he does best.

And Hathaway, well, Innocent wishes him luck. It's a waste of a good upper management candidate, but if Hathaway turns out the way he's beginning, he's got a fair chance of carrying on the Morse and Lewis development project.

She just hopes there'll be another DCS in this place when he does. She can't take a whole career of looking out for those two.


End file.
